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Your content is more powerful and more sharable when it’s personalized with your fans and followers. How you could do it:

1. On a billboard in Times Square
2. On your new website
3. On a fancy bottle of tap water
4. Check it out: Passive Aggressive Notes

1. On a billboard in Times Square

There are few places to better show off your supporters than to put their face on one of the highest-trafficked areas in the country. LIVESTRONG did just that for more than 20,000 fans as part of their effort during this summer’s UN Summit to make cancer a global health priority. It was simple for fans to participate — they just had to upload a photo — and it helped send a powerful message to world leaders by showing them the real people behind LIVESTRONG’s movement.

The lesson: Your story is more powerful when you let your fans tell it for you.

That new thing you’re building, launching, or unveiling could be a whole lot more interesting for your fans if they were involved in it — even if only in a small way. Dutch news site Recensiekoning did a big countdown for the launch of their new site, and anyone who tweeted about it had their Twitter photo added to the countdown screen. It was a simple promotion, but fans loved it. So many people got involved, Recensiekoning became a trending topic in the Netherlands and the site temporarily crashed.

The lesson: If you can keep it simple and fun, your fans are happy to help spread the word about your new project (and how they’re involved in it).

Would you pay for tap water? What if that tap water belonged to Rihanna, Taylor Swift, or Robin Williams? And what if the bottle it came in had their face on it? That’s the concept behind UNICEF’s latest promotion for their Tap Project which asks people in high-end restaurants to pay for tap water to help bring clean water to kids around the world. In their celebrity campaign, every person that donated at least $5 was entered to win a bottle of water from a celebrity’s home faucet. The bottles themselves looked like something expensive vodka would come in and featured the mug of each celebrity whose house it came from.

The lesson: A generic celebrity endorsement is one thing. But when you make it this personal, it’s more fun for them and much more interesting for everyone else.

I taught word of mouth marketing at Northwestern University and internet entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of Business. I’m a serial entrepreneur who founded and advises startups and nonprofits. And I’m a rabid purist on the topic of marketing ethics.

About This Blog

"Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!" is full of unusually useful ideas borrowed from the smartest marketers. Good marketing is more about brains than bucks. The best business ideas are easy to do, inexpensive, simple, and fun. Learn to simplify your business, earn word of mouth, and thrill your customers.